To take advantage of opportunities/solve problems, the need for a greater than local/cross-boundary approach can be seen. Regional cooperation is the nominal tool, yet the goal is to be greater; have greater capacity, resources, market,…. Greater is regional; working across boundaries achieves it. Cooperation is possible when people recognize such regional community. This is regional intelligence: Greater Communities solving problems, of which security is foremost; altogether “community motive.”

If St. Louis area business and government leaders needed any more reasons to embrace the gospel of regional cooperation to boost economic development, they got a powerful sermon on Tuesday: Other regions already are way out front.

Economic development experts from other regions met with St. Louis region business and government leaders to stress the importances of working together.

That was the lesson taught by economic development experts from Kansas City, Nashville and Oklahoma City. ... hammered home the point that intramural turf battles can't do anything but hurt a metropolitan area's efforts to attract businesses from an outside world that is focused on a much larger picture.

... chief economic development and marketing officer for the Nashville area chamber of commerce, put it: "Fighting is nothing but risk, and risk is the enemy of economic development."

... Kansas City Area Development Council: "We have to approach what we do as a region. We can't do it any other way."

Online retailer Amazon is looking to bring more jobs than the initial payroll of 2,000 to a distribution center it is opening this fall ...

..."We have a history of growing in states that welcome us. We want to grow here."

That goal was announced near the conclusion of a daylong celebration of Amazon's arrival in the Midlands, a gathering that seemed unlikely after a legislative setback in late April.

... credited the determination of area business and political leaders to revive a tax break for the $125 million project as a turning point in the conflict....Lexington County leaders say the resurrection of the project taught them ways to better work together.

When it comes to economic development, bigger is better. That is why metropolitan areas such as Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga manage to attract big corporate investments, expansions and economic growth. These are tough business environments for smaller communities to compete against. That's why the regional approach to economic development involving Jackson-Madison County and several other West Tennessee cities and counties make sense.

Jackson has long been the economic hub of West Tennessee outside of Memphis-Shelby County. Even a community the size of Jackson-Madison County is hard pressed to compete with large urban areas. But when you begin to think regionally, rural West Tennessee becomes a more attractive potential business environment.

A wind energy supply chain is emerging in the Portland-Vancouver region as manufacturers and economic development agencies step up efforts to win a growing piece of the global wind energy market.

..., regional economic development agencies, including the Columbia River Economic Development Council and the Portland Development Commission, are offering companies renewable energy training programs and are talking up the region at global wind power trade shows....

Most of the wind turbines in the U.S. are imported from foreign manufacturers, largely in China and Europe. Yet, regional wind energy boosters hope to make the Portland-Vancouver region a hub for the manufacture, installation, repair and maintenance of wind energy components.

A pedestrian-friendly world trade center on Pittsburgh International Airport grounds. The green redevelopment of University Boulevard in Moon Township. The creation of a new high-tech town at the now-rural corner of Routes 22/30 and the Findlay Connector. These are some of the plans that could jump from the drawing board to reality in and around Pittsburgh International Airport within the next three or four decades.

... The idea is to create a Pittsburgh Aerotropolis, an economic region centered around an airport that combines the best of industrial, commercial, educational and residential development. The term was coined by John Kasarda, of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, who addressed the conference Monday at Robert Morris University.

PELL CITY — The City Council began formal talks about redistricting for next year’s election after the 2010 census showed a substantial increase in the city’s population.

Brett Isom, a geographic information systems administrator for the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham, told the council Monday night that the city saw 33-34 percent growth since the last census, which will require a new form of government after the 2012 election.

“There’s no reason to think we can’t keep five districts,” Isom said.

The Regional Planning Commission helped the city re-establish voting districts after the 2000 census came out.

The Charlotte City Council passed its $1.6 billion budget Monday night, but voted to withhold $10 million slated for the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority because of concerns with oversight at the city's tourism arm....The CRVA board in April had voted to hire a consultant to review its operations after the Observer reported a staff member had been given $115,000 in bonus payments from the CIAA basketball tournament. In addition, the consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, was to review the authority's spending. The Observer reported that the CRVA spends money on local business leaders and public officials for dinners, drinks, sports and concert tickets as "thank you" gifts.

But after paying PricewaterhouseCoopers $25,000 plus expenses, the CRVA said it had no written report from the firm. Instead, it released to the media a 21/2-page summary of the consultant's findings, written by board members.

Bus Rapid Transit to Journal Square, a bikeway along the Morris Canal and permanent mass transit into the heart Liberty State Park — these are the major transportation issues soon to be examined in Jersey City, now that the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) has authorized three new local studies as part of its Fiscal Year 2010-11 work program....The studies are part of the NJTPA’s Subregional Studies Program, a competitive grant program designed to help counties and cities develop transportation improvement strategies rooted in the NJTPA’s Regional Transportation Plan. The Liberty State Park and Morris Canal studies are estimated to cost $220,000 each, and the BRT study is estimated to cost $250,000, with funding beginning on July 1 and stretching over two years. All three studies will be paid for primarily with federal funds....

Iowa Workforce Development is shutting down 37 field offices statewide, despite top legislators from both political parties saying they oppose the plan.

The plan is expected to affect rural parts of the state the most. Lawmakers say it would cause some unemployed Iowans to have to drive up to 80 miles to one of 16 regional workforce development offices, rather than having a satellite

office that’s closer to home.

...

Iowa Workforce Development Communications Coordinator Katie Hommer on Thursday told IowaPolitics.com that the budget plan calls for shutting 37 offices statewide, or two fewer than the original plan of closing 39 offices. A February news release from the department described it as a “reformed and enhanced delivery system” that would turn 55 field offices into “16 regional integrated one-stop offices and over 500 locally enhanced access points.

The outlook of the opposition Social Liberal Union (USL) on the public administration and regional development will be implemented in three stages, till 2016, but only after a referendum is held and the Constitution is amended, ...

In 2012 they should start transferring tasks from the central government to the regions and the Ministry of Regional Development is dissolved. In 2014 the local authorities will elect a regional council, headed by a regional chairman, and there will be a transition period till 2016 in order to take over the funds control.

In the USL outlook the central government retains regulating and controlling tasks and everything pertaining to development must devolve on the provinces.

Every region must have a big university, a big hospital, an airport, a business centre and a cultural centre, suggests USL....

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) has once again shown that regionalism is very much alive and can work well for the benefit of the people of nations that choose to co-operate in the true spirit of the norms agreed upon by concerned signatories.

...

Last month, the Solomon Islands decided to close its territorial waters to international purse seiner vessels fishing in them. Observers are hailing this decision as one of the toughest stands taken by a Pacific Islands nation in favour of sustainable fisheries and in co-operating with other signatory member nations of the Parties of the Nauru Agreement.

The system is based on a geocode scheme set up for earth that focuses on established political boundaries as a basis for regional grouping of nations, states and localities. It is decimal system based to take advantage of the sort criteria for numbers in computers. It utilized the Sector Group and Region codes of the United Nations and ISO. Geographic information system technology does not solve the problem, but its tools can be used with the geocodes.

The geocode system effectively organizes Wikipedia entries as a library management and the geocodes can be used for data aggregation. This has been developed under a Creative Commons license and would benefit from a global network implementation where local users cooperatively related subnational geographic regions and component political geography.

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Earth ( we know its a spherical whole)

Humanity's Local Planet

Universe Man at the Boundary

Local Planet - Regional Space

Our Local Planet has systems of Political Geographies which combine as Regional/Greater Communities

Universe Man's place on earth is local and regional silmultaneously depending upon the system of regions, sub-regions of the planet as local wholes: continents, nations, states, provinces, districts, counties, shires, municipalities. etc., which have local regions within and between them which are capable of being greater communities at many scales.

Based on my experience as a regional planner and agency director, 1973 -2008, and in recognition of emerging "regional communities," I developed three thoughts about community that relate to the challenge of working across-boundaries as greater or regional communities. The thoughts/theses apply for communities at the scale of bonding or bridging social capital as defined by Robert D. Putnam, which is alternately local or regional. (link below)

As of 2011, considering the global financial crisis brought about by pursuit of the "profit motive," it struck me that this has come to dominate modern life. This is a relatively new invention of civilization and wasn't a concern for most of the time that homo sapiens has been on the planet.

The three thoughts below that had emerged in my experience of working on regional cooperation now represent what I now posit as the "community motive." Concern about "profit" can emerge within an established community over time, but, to my mind the "profit motive" does not exist in the wild.

1) Community precedes cooperation.2) Community is how life solves all problems.3) Security is the primary purpose of community.

These three thoughts, theses if you will, are the basis of the "community motive." Following is some exposition about each one.

As I see it, security has always been the priority for humans since the plains of Africa. That's why communities first seek to establish defensible boundaries. After the basics are in place, security focus shifts to the social and economic. Boundaries work like the membrane in the osmosis experiment most of us have seen in a science class. The membrane is a filter that lets the good things pass through, but keeps unwanted things out. (Osmosis -YouTube - 45 sec.)

The evolved political boundaries of today have consequence. The rules change when you cross them. Though marked on the ground and fortified in some instances, they are conceptual, as pictured above, with Universe Man. The boundary divides the space between local, that within, and regional, everything outside, as labeled in the second panel. The third panel repeats the image within, to show, without graphic elegance, that the land on which Universe Man sits is regional at another scale, as determined by other boundaries, and another area that's local. A territory is both local and regional, depending upon the perspective.

Communities of communities, “regional communities” are greater communities organized to solve a problem, be it managing a watershed, strengthening an economic cluster or ensuring peer competition for school sports. Regional boundaries can be imposed for administrative purposes within states, but for these to be a basis for effective cooperation, a greater community sense is needed for that geography among the people. This is true for multi-state and multi-national regional communities as well. The leaders with such a vision can build a regional community by finding that which is already in place.

This is not to suggest that community is easy to build in order to solve problems. In a crisis, humans of any culture, belief or politics can quickly come together and self-organize to save themselves and others. It was the on-the- ground response to the 9/11 attacks that demonstrated to me the deep responsiveness of human community, as well as the fundamental importance of security. Community is how humans have always survived. This, I think, extends to all life forms.